


Dust is the only secret

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Jewelry, Mary takes up where the Union Army leaves off, Vignette, Widowed, but i tried, can Silas Bullen actually have any plot-value?, inspired by an exchange in comments, still no - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 02:19:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17889650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: She'd been able to redeem her brooch, but not her cashmere shawl.





	Dust is the only secret

Mary tugged the ring from her finger and set it down on the wooden counter. It had seemed lighter on her hand. Once it was away from her, she saw how it carefully had been made, beaten from gold; how once Gustav had asked a jeweler to engrave the date, _Meine geliebte_ , in a Gothic script not unlike the hand he used when writing letters to his relatives in Bavaria.

“Ain’t got nothing left to sell, eh, missus?” 

Bullen’s voice was behind her, noxious as sulfur, slick as vinegar or lye. She drew her glove back on. The kid was worn, soft with age. Cossetted Emma Green would have winced to see it; she would have had a set of pearls or star sapphires in front of her in a velvet lined case. Jed—would he notice the hand he’d once held tightly, when he retched in his misery, was now bare? He was already familiar with her callouses, her bluntly trimmed nails.

“I am sufficient to myself. Like the evils of the day,” Mary said. Bullen would likely not recognize the reference to the Good Book. She wished never to speak to him, but she couldn’t let sick men starve, nor Samuel suffer. And she would not let any woman miss the chance to say goodbye—it was little enough and it was all that mattered.

“Fine lady, Baroness—would’ve thought you’d more left to you. Or maybe you don’t care, never loved him, the old damn fool,” Bullen said conversationally. She knew she was not to answer, she balled her hands into fists and breathed, thought of Gustav surveying a field white with a heavy snowfall, the sky white with more to come, murmuring,

“How lovely, _meine Perle_.”

“He would understand. Everything,” she said, spending as few words as she could on the wretched devil. She believed in Hell now, as she hadn’t before she’d come to Virginia.

“Everything, eh? The silly cow eyes you make at Foster—and his hands pawin’ you? Yer weddin’ ring sold, worthless?” Bullen taunted. She felt her gorge rise, imagined the brief, exquisite pleasure of vomiting bile on his boots and walking away, wiping her lips with a lace-edged handkerchief with Gustav’s monogram in the corner, the tiny embroidered crown like a smile.

“I’ll take it in coin, not scrip,” Mary said to the man running the shop. He had children to feed, she imagined, almost everyone did in Alexandria, and he’d never tried to cheat her. He handed her the coins, cool where the ring had been warm, and she dropped them in her reticule, feeling the weight pull at her wrist. Gustav had kissed her there and Jed Foster had held her, his dark eyes pleading, angry, desperate.

“Good day,” she said to the pawnbroker, ignoring Bullen.

“Won’t Foster like to hear of this? More grist to the mill,” Bullen laughed, meanly. Had he been this way as a baby, sniggering at his mother’s breast?

“He’ll only hear the truth, and know it. He doesn’t care for gossip,” Mary said.

“You’d like to think so, Baroness. You’d like it that way—and maybe he don’t. Maybe you don’t know so much,” Bullen said. Then he spat on the floor, though there was a spittoon to his right, his boots thumping like cannon, like a death-knell. Mary thought of Gustav, nodding at her for doing right and Jed, patient for once, vowing to buy back her ring, holding it out in his hand because he could not put it on her finger. Not without a kiss or the look in his eyes that told her how he wanted her. 

“I’ll come back when I can, to buy it back. Please, it shan’t take that long,” she told the shopkeeper. Bullen guffawed but she was silent. The man behind the counter picked up the ring, held it in his hand. He studied her face as if he’d never seen her before. Or as if they were old friends and it hurt him to take the ring and shut it away.

“I’ll wait. Long as I can,” he said. That was when tears came into her eyes, tears that stung, that she daren’t let fall.

“Thank you,” she said. Bullen made an obscene noise but she understood what it meant. He could not understand gratitude or faith, earnest hope or hopelessness. He’d only mastered greed and that wasn’t enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I can't quite recall what the comment exchange was, but I speculated that Mary would pay out of her own pocket for telegrams to be sent to families of patients who were dying-- and then I imagined that she'd have to pawn her stuff to fund Hale's victims. And then, I thought, who else would be at a pawn-shop in Alexandria?
> 
> And thus, this vignette, with Silas Bullen being horrible in yet another way (but with more plot potential and less actual assault) made its way into being.
> 
> The title is from Emily Dickinson.


End file.
